The photos were taken at the Weiwei echibition at Blenheim Palace
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/70234/on-poetry

This music must caress my inner ear
Taking me to childhood joy and love
How much beauty can a human bear?

Laughing at my own jokes
Drawing cats while watching a film
Eating a date.[ not human]
Cleaning my teeth with a hairbrush and my nails with a toothbrush.And leaving my hair natural.
Letting my tea go cold.
Well, it’s a bad day today because I didn’t have a chance to sin.I’ll do better tomorrow
If you see what I glean.

She tainted during the dinner
Do you mean taunted?
Taunted whom?
Who is Hume?
David, he is a philosopher
Is he read?
Red or dead?
He was before Marx
Bookmarks?
They had no computers.
I can’t deceive you any more.
When did you start?
When that man hit the gong
So he startled you?
Into a  life of rhyme,sorry, crime
Send for the police.
How?
Send a letter
First class
Thank you.I am honoured
No, you are a fool
Well,I don’t fool myself.
Is that my fault?
Why build a house on  a fault line?
It’s easier when you divorce.
But will the earthquake break it into equal parts?
Infinitely many.
So calculus can be handy.
More so than an incubus
We have inkwells here.
Are they in the garden?
No, we don’t want them to get wet
Put lids on
Honestly if I knew you before I’d never have misarranged our wedding.
So who did arrange it?
Leonard Cohen.
But he died.
Not because of us?
No, he was ill already
Well being a marriage broker is not easy
But the chairs are.
I chair the faculty of meet the metrics.
Is it in Decimal?
No, English.
No English! I just don’t believe it.
That makes no difference to the language
How rude!
But words have no ears.
Do they have eyes?
Only the needles
Knitting needles?
You are joking
How amusing
Not terribly but you are trying.
So are you.I divorce you.
You have to say it 3 times
Am I Jewish?
I don’t know but God is.
And Mary?
What about her?
See her  blog, “about”
Don’t tell me they’re on Twitter!
Alright,I shan’t tell you!
Now, this really is the end

• We often gave  sinner parties after we got our own flat.
  His eyes  showed he was far too right with wings to prove it
  We entertained all of them without even knowing it.
  I am the widow of his soul
  As Catholics we were forbidden to use crampons at any time especially at menstruation or death
  Contravention was not allowed in the marriage bed which was lucky as it was only 4 feet wide and we had  two each
  Then silence fell over me and my loved one  lost  his head
  I beg your jargon,I am a  poet
  Who’re you ruling these days?
  Did I say you were a graph?
  That’s no cliche,it’s my own intention.
  Never say  economics to me ever again
  How about austerity?
  A posteriorioriiiiiiiiiii, Eh?

The nearer we got together,
the further we were apart
This went on for ever
And now I have no heart

He went ever higher
I went ever down
He said he was a liar
Yet he never clowned

We went on forever
Reaching for the line
Now I know we’ll never
Ever be entwined

Zero came between us
We could not get through
Infinite the problems
Zero solved for you.

I saw the line beside me
But I ran on down
You  must not deride me
Though you are a clown

Frozen in equations
Beauty is entrapped
Icy are the regions
Where my heart was mapped

Cold and austere presence
Alpine supergrass
No-one calls it pleasant
But the beauty lasts.

Across the wall, the grief and anger grow
Neither side will benefit from war.
The  water stolen  and the olives mown

Sewage  into  deep blue seas now flows
What are we,inhuman, what’s this for?
Across the wall, the grief and anger grow

Where prophets  spoke to El   and what they saw.
The holy writing, do not let them tear
Though  water’s stolen  and  olive trees are bowed

One mirror with two faces  in its maw
The sin of Cain,oh holy land debarred.
Within the wall, the grief and anger groan

Here are the relics and the stones unthroned
How will these human peoples ,brothers,fare
The  water stolen,olive trees alone?

Around us lie the  bodies broken, sore
Did we hope to entertain God’s whores?
Into the wall, the grief and anger melt
The  water  dries up and the olives wilt

https://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/the-scholar-as-poet-remembering-geoffrey-hartman-1929-2016

“Yoma”

Rain in the autumn, rain in the spring

let it rain poetry, dear God,

midrashic parables, rabbinic clichés,

or, better still, the comfort of Psalms.

I know those traps, those enemies, Lord,

help me in my old age, my distress:

this day I stand contrite before you,

eyes, broken images, ears,

dimmed by unceasing sighs.

Where is your comfort to be found?

No longer in the lai-lai-lai of prayersong.

In all your holy mountain what survives

not stained by cries for blood? Where now

the numinous Jordan, the pure Helicon?

Encompassed by my own inanities

I stumble and fade, searching… searching…

Ah, woe betide! the nymphs of memory

draw me under, into a bitter wave

that whelms and does not cleanse.

I am poured out, unrhymed, unrhythmed.

I was in a writer’s group some years ago, an extraordinary group because except for me it was composed entirely of women–and they were elderly, seventy, eighty, ninety years old. At first I thought, “What am I doing with this bunch of old ladies?” But I quickly changed my tune. They were tremendously talented and […]

via Fiction and Truth — davidjrogersftw

Blue glass and the  bowl of sea shells bring
Memories of Dunwich and the sand
Where the marble   of drowned churches    rightly sings

Bell towers sound like underwater  gongs
Struck by sailors lost, with sea soaked hands
Blue glass and the  bowl of sea shells ring

In the sky the gulls spread pure white wings
They live in  air, on sea, and on the land
While the marble   of drowned churches    softly sings

I found your photo on the shore sea-rinsed
In Whitby  I could almost understand
How blue glass and the  bowl of sea shells ring

The sand from Yorkshire’s caught by great sea winds
Moved to Norfolk, where the shore expands
As the choir   of  long drowned sailors   softly sings

I’ll come by land, by air,by sea, by song
To find my love,my heart  has been well wrung
Blue glass and the  bowl of sea shells hint
At the marble   of drowned churches  as they sing

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/whos-afraid-of-the-foreve_b_5634222.html

“A new study published in the journal Science looked at results from 11 different experiments involving over 700 subjects and found that the majority of participants reported that it was “unpleasant” to be alone in a room with their thoughts for as few as six minutes. The researchers discovered that most people would rather administer painful electric shocks to themselves than be left alone with their thoughts. This effect was particularly strong for men, who overwhelmingly preferred the shock (64 percent of male participants as compared to 15 percent of female participants).

Why do most people hate being alone with their thoughts? Pain. When you feel physical or psychological pain you instinctively move away from it. However, when you feel emotional pain there’s nowhere to go. Instead you may try to escape by distracting yourself with your cellphone.

Pain is an inevitable part of life. In fact, in many ways, pain is good for you. Plus, there is no avoiding it, and trying to escape from it can lead to other problems. Besides the obvious danger of texting while driving and the tragedy of missing out on the life that is going on outside of your three-inch screen, new evidence is emerging that avoiding being alone can hinder your capacity for empathy and creativity.

So what can you do to avoid avoiding your fear of being alone?

Cultivate Presence

The way to wean yourself fear of being alone is to gradually expose yourself to being present with yourself. You can cultivate a sense of presence in just a few minutes a day, either through meditation, prayer or just taking time each day to be silent. This can also be achieved by practicing yoga a few times per week.

In order to endure and grow from pain you must be able to experience it. Avoiding it makes it worse. No one wants to be in pain, but remember that pain is also an opportunity. When you take the time to slow down and experience what is bothering you, you can grow and change from the pain so you can experience the pleasure that is out there for you as well.”

• • Living life in all its fierceness,

    Birth and death and joy and pain

    We struggle on our unknown journey,

    Sometimes lost and found again.

    We are indeed like lambs to slaughter

    Death will be our final goal.

    But while we live,let us live bravely.

    Let us not destroy our souls.

    Climbing in the hills and moorlands

    In the heather, children play.

    The sun half blinds me with its light

    Yet still I see the given way.

    I received a call to climb.

    These hills are my essential home.

    My vocation is to dwell here

    While in the silence,mind may roam.

    Noise in cities is destructive.

    Though nature’s fierce,it’s also true.

    Struggling on life’s craggy slopes

    I offer up my words to you.

Mary watched the beginning of the News because Emile, being male, insisted he should be up to date politically.
First there was a good story that many migrants were rescued  from a boat off  the Italian but alas another  later boat capsized so  far more were drowned.And Boris Johnson appeared like a pale imitation of Donald Trump  complaining about immigrants here..
What do they want,she asked her kind cat.We weep if they drown yet will not admit them here just as it was with the Jews in the early days of Hitler.
Is it a a spiritual   test?Do we value new kitchens and fancy aprons from Harrods above helping others.
Yes,said Emile.I am very selfish.I look after myself
Well you have no money Emile so you can’t donate.I suppose if an immigrant brings a cat you would let them share your home?
Definitely,the cat told her.You could marry a male immigrant and I could have fun with his cat.
Well,we’ll take it more slowly,Mary said..I am not quite ready to remarry and there might be a food problem.
You can have my tinned food if you want and I’ll go out and catch more mice.Cats can still hunt.Definitely.I could even eat another cat’s food if I get through the cat flap
Now,Emile, crime is not the answer,Mary told him with a smile.
I suppose with some brown rice hot cat food might make a good meal.It looks like the potted meat we used to buy from the corner shop when I was a child.It’s  jelly form stewed shin of beef  or in cat food it may not be shin of beef  it might be shin of mouse!Well,you are kind ,Emile although you look odd since you were swimming in the kitchen.Maybe you need a good rinse as the Persil might poison you if you lick it
So she took Emile into the bathroom and he stood in a plastic bowl in the bath while Mary rinsed  him down.Then she rolled a big soft bath towel round him and put him by the fire while she phoned Dave.
Dave,did you get indigestion from the fried batter? she enquired delicately
No,said Dave.I’ll have it again next time I come round. I’ve got a good idea for some games we can play too.
I hope Chess is not one because I don’t like thinking too much.I do enough writing my book on Wittgenstein’s clothes and whether Dirac was autistic.Though really,what mattered was his equation.It was a bit like a mirror where the negative of every positive resided balefully.Even Lacan has written about mirrors  as has Sylvia Plath,
OK said Dave and I’ve met a really nice gay woman  who you  might want to meet sometime
Why? said Mary
You need some TLC
I  might take in an asylum seeker and they can  help me as the arthritis is very bad.I could even register  my house as an asylum.Do you remember the term Lunatic Asylum? Since I am a bit crazy now and then it would be legal
Well, let’s wait and see what the government does
And so weep all of us

http://www.openculture.com/2014/01/read-ezra-pounds-list-of-23-donts-for-writing-poetry-1913.html

Extract:Ezra Pound was a key figure in 20^th century poetry. Not only did he demonstrate impressive poetic skill in his Cantos; he also proved to be a crucial early supporter of several famous contemporaries, championing the likes of Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and H.D.. Before deservedly being condemned for his fascist politics and antisemitism, Pound established himself as one of the leading literary critics of his time. David Perkins, in A History of Modern Poetry, wrote, “During a crucial decade in the history of modern literature, approximately 1912-1922, Pound was the most influential and in some ways the best critic of poetry in England or America.”

1. What the expert is tired of today the public will be tired of tomorrow. Don’t imagine that the art of poetry is any simpler than the art of music, or that you can please the expert before you have spent at least as much effort on the art of verse as an average piano teacher spends on the art of music.
2. Be influenced by as many great artists as you can, but have the decency either to acknowledge the debt outright, or to try to conceal it. Don’t allow ‘influence’ to mean merely that you mop up the particular decorative vocabulary of some one or two poets whom you happen to admire. A Turkish war correspondent was recently caught red-handed babbling in his dispatches of ‘dove-grey’ hills, or else it was ‘pearl-pale’, I can not remember.
3. Use either no ornament or good ornament.

I leaned against the radio on my chair
Why put a button on the front,I cry
An opera burst out,giving me a stir

The chair is broad and could become a lair
For wolves or foxes, no need to apply.
I leaned against the radio on my chair

I live in a house, so is it fair
That animals have  got no wings to fly
Loud voices sang out,giving me a stir

For opera, one has to have the flair
Good taste and feeling, these we cannot buy
I leaned against an angel on my chair

Yet if   schools did the arts,chance would be there
There is music in an orphan’s sigh.
Oh  people sang  and bells rang in cold air

In late winter many old folk die
Make sure you tell your love  without a lie
I leaned against the radio on my chair
An opera burst out, music’s everywhere!

In between the darkness and the bright,

Graded shades of grey and lilac lie.

short-eared durham owl
meditating over the dale’s edge,
shadows the fields and folds
in elegant diurnal flight.
on wind-side,careful sight
may swoop to prey
and away.
your yellow broad-eyed look,
at once both sharp and distant,
holds me.
oh,silence,
oh,wind on green,
oh,earth,
sky.
immense your held vision,
sphere without center,
pied geometer of flight,
oh, what descent and ascent.
trees bunched by dry stone wall
call heart home

 by Sue Clancy

Cats at the Bar: Cats and Clean Laundry

I have bought 200  Brillo pads and 499 tea bags.I ate one thinking it was a bun.So that’s why I am losing weight.
I bought all these online because I had an accident and could not go out.Anyway,I burned my best pan made of copper last night so am hoping the Brillo will clean it.That is 10 pans I have wrecked since becoming a widow.And broken many pieces of china that were wedding presents [not on purpose]
I suppose I must be going to break something so better a bowl or a cup than my bones.
My husband used to burn pans and I used to explain that I always put water into a pan as soon as I remove the food.So it seems I am continuing his misdemeanors by not doing this myself
I had shingles recently and I feel tired so I sit next to my packet of mini aspirins all day feeling too idle to get an aspirin out.Still it proves I don’t really need them.
If the doorbell rings, I don’t feel like bothering to get up to see who it is.I’ll have to buy a pillar to live on.Like those hermits in long gone days.
Could I get to sleep on a pillar.How big were they?

https://fullfact.org/blog/2018/jan/fake-news/#

“Lord love a duck” as my Mam used to say

I lose myself in  desolate despair
The silence seems to hiss as I sit here
I find no consolation  anywhere.

I hear priests and rabbis talk of care
But what do men know of a woman’s fear?
I lose myself in  desolate despair

Yet with my holy spirit I will dare
To travel in  grey deserts where men jeer
I have found no consolation ,not so far

In  human lives these  passages occur
Where owls hoot and  black trees bend down to leer
When we lose ourself in  desolate despair

I have dwelled here  and I’m well prepared
Yet panic strikes me and I cannot steer
I’ve found  suffering ‘s better not deferred

Even God is deaf and I’m in tears
Yet  struggling in lost worlds, I know  love’s near
I find myself in  desolate despair
I want no consolation  nor false cheer.